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Talab
The village ponds or talab is a low tech solution to India's water problems that requires very little capital expenditure. All it needs is manpower. 700 million people live in the villages of India, so manpower is in abundance!
In the village, traditionally, there were 2 ponds, one for the animals and one for humans. But the more obvious uses of the talab are dwarfed by the enormous importance of talabs in water table management and control of droughts and floods.
The talab serves as an aquefier. It is strategically positioned in the village so that all the rain water drains into it. Without talabs, the rain water drains away into the sea, carrying valuable top soil with it and causing floods. With talabs, less rain water is wasted. But the water that collects in the talab is miniscule compared with the amount that seeps through into the underground water table, recharging it. It rains for 2 or 3 months in India, and with each rain, the talab charges the underground water levels. So what you see inside the talab is only a small percentage of the water collected by it.
Wells rarely run dry in summer if talabs are nearby, or run dry much later. So in one stroke, you can cut down on floods, droughts and top soil erosion!
The population of India has increased from 300 million to 1 billion. But the number of talabs have remained the same in the last 50 years!
There are 500,000 villages in India, whose population has increased from 250million to 750 million. So the talabs should also increase from 2 to 6 per village. But even if only one new talab is dug per village, it translates into 5 lakh ponds across the length and breadth of India. That is an enormous amount of water.
The amount of monsoon rain that falls in India is actually mindboggling. Enough water falls for ten times India's population to live with abundant water. But we harvest only 5 % of the water that falls. The rest washes into the sea.
The only way to keep this water within India is talabs, since mountains with small streams which can be dammed form only a small part of our total area. Although small dams are a must, only the talab is a solution for the plains.
What is needed is very little. Individual panchayats must be encouraged to dig their own ponds, with some token assistance of money. In times of drought, instead of providing work for food assistance by asking people to build roads (which wash away with the next flood), they must be used instead in digging ponds in their own village. Railway land all along the length of the tracks must also be used for this purpose, more than it is already. Most importantly, this important message must reach every village.
Our water engineers must train not in canals, but how to locate and position talabs, how to increase efficiency and how to carry out yearly maintainance to reduce silting.
Most importantly, our prime minister, irrigation minister, IAS officers in agriculture and irrigation ministries must get this message. Only they can implement all of this. Our administrators must administer and our ministers must minister to our needs.
So get with it, you lazy IAS baggages!